So then Alcock cut in and says “Yes but you will notice they don’t come from different places at once and the bird that throws them gos from 1 place to another so as we will think the trenchs is full of Germans.” So Simon says “They couldn’t nobody go from 1 place to another place as fast as them flares shoots up from different places.” So Alcock says “No they couldn’t nobody do it if they walked but the man that throws them flares don’t walk because he hasn’t got only 1 leg as his other leg was shot off early in the war. But Van Hindenburg is so hard up for men that even if you get a leg shot off as soon as the Dr. mops up the mess and sticks on the court plaster they send the bird back in the war and put him on a job where you don’t half to walk. So they stuck this old guy in the motorcycle dept. and now all as he does is ride up and down some quite section like this here all night and stop every so often and throw up a flare to make us think the place is dirty with Germans.”
Well Al Simon thought it over a wile and then asked Alcock how a man could ride a motorcycle with only 1 leg and Alcock says “Why not because you don’t half to peddle a motorcycle as they run themself.” So Simon says yes but how about it when you want to get off? So Alcock says “What has a man’s legs got to do with him getting off of a motorcycle as long as you have got your head to light on?”
That is what they handed him Al and they hadn’t hardly no sooner then got through with that dose when Brady begun on the souvenirs. First he asked him if he had got a hold of any new ones lately and Simon says no he hadn’t seen nobody that had any for sale and besides his jack was low so Brady asked him how much did he have and he says about 4 franks. So Brady says “Well you can’t expect anybody to come across with anything first class for no such chicken’s food as that.” So Simon says well even if he had a pocket full of jack he couldn’t buy nothing with it when they wasn’t nothing to buy. Then Brady asked him if he had saw the German speegle Ted Phillips had picked up and Simon says no so Brady went and got Phillips and after a wile he come back with him and Phillips said he had the speegle in his pocket and he would show it to us if we promised to be carefull and not jar it out of his hands wile he was showing it as he wouldn’t have it broke for the world. So Simon stood there with his eyes popping out and Phillips pulled the speegle out of his pocket and it wasn’t nothing only a dirty little looking glass that you could pretty near crall through the cracks in it and all the boys remarked what a odd little speegle it was and they hadn’t never saw 1 like it before and etc. and finely Simon couldn’t keep his clam shut no longer so he asked Phillips how much he would take for it. Well Phillips says it wasn’t for sale as speegles was scarce in Germany on acct. of the war and that was why the Dutchmens always looked like a bum when you took them a prisoner. So Simon asked him what price he would set on it suppose he would sell it and Phillips says about 8 franks. Well Simon got out all his jack and they wasn’t only 4 franks and he showed it to Phillips and said if he would take 10 franks for the speegle he would give him 4 franks down and the other 6 franks when he got hold of some jack so Phillips hummed and hawed a wile and finely said all right Simon could have it but he wouldn’t never sell it to him only that it kept worring him so much to carry it in his pocket for the fear he would loose it or break it.
Well Al Phillips has got Simon’s last 4 franks and Simon has got Phillips’s speegle and I suppose now that the boys sees how soft it is they will be selling him stuff on credit and he will owe them his next months pay before they get through with him and I suppose the next thing you know they will keep their beard when they shave and sell it to him for German tobacco. Well I would half to be pretty hard up before I went in on some skin game like that and I would just as leave go up to 1 of them cripples that use to spraddle all over the walk along 35 st. after the ball game and stick my heel in their eye and romp off with their days receipts.
In the Trenchs, June 11.
Friend Al: Well Al it seems like Capt. Seeley is up on his ear because they haven’t took our regt. out of here yet because it seems Gen. Pershing told Gen. Foch that he was to help himself to any part of the U.S. army and throw them in where ever they was needed and they’s been a bunch of the boys throwed in along
